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Tuesday, August 9, 2016

‟When did music become so important?” Don Draper asked in the first episode of Season 5 of Mad Men (“A Little Kiss”). His young wife Megan responds, ‟It’s always been important.”

By this episode the show was set in the mid 1960s, so this spoke to an obvious generation gap. Both characters are right, in their context. Music has always been important. It just wasn’t until the 50s and 60s that it became a dominant cultural force that informed and influenced millions of people. Radio and records and other advancements of technology, as well as the vast expansion of youth culture, made this possible in ways that people of Don Draper’s generation just couldn’t quite comprehend.

This has been true for fiftyish years, with The Beatles appearance on Ed Sullivan as the hundredth monkey tipping point that changed the world in this regard. I’m sure a quick Google perusal of the internet will turn up thousands of articles about the larger cultural ramifications of this. The point has also been made that this is something that is specific to this moment in time and that in many ways we have already moved past it.

That isn’t meant as a ‟Rock is Dead!” declaration. It’s an acknowledgement that the world has kept on moving and that the cultural forces that led to this are no longer present. The internet has changed the way we consume music and interact with those who make it. For all the success of a Lady Gaga or a Justin Bieber it just doesn’t seem like any of the current batch of stars have the social relevance or staying power of the artists who preceded them. I know how much that sounds like an old guy decrying ‟Back in my day!!!” but that’s truly not my intention. I want new artists to succeed. More importantly I want young people to have the same kinds of joyous experiences with music, live and otherwise, that I have had. I don’t know if that’s possible anymore, for much larger reasons than the cliched and wrong-headed opinion that they ‟just don’t make good music anymore.” I just don’t think there is the same kind of infrastructure that will allow for a David Bowie, or a Madonna, or a U2 or an REM to emerge, let alone enjoy the longevity and social relevence of these and many other artists. I hope I’m wrong.

I’m
currently reading a book of essays by Chuck Klosterman called ‟But What if We’re Wrong?” that addresses the idea that in the future
everything we think we know about the present will be wrong. The
things we think are important now will be seen through the eyes of
history and retrospect with a much wider perspective than we are
currently capable of. As proof of this he reminds us of the way we
interpret history now. Van Gogh and Kafka were failures in their
lives but now one is the most famous artist ever and the other has
joined the very framework of our language as an adjective. Custer was
once seen as an American hero. Now he’s thought of as a genocidal
maniac. Try convincing a farmer in the Dark Ages that we live in a
heliocentric universe. The world keeps turning and our reality keeps
changing around us and for the most part, in our limited time here
and limited sense of perspective, we just don’t notice. We assume
things will always be the way they are until they aren’t. I can’t
imagine a world without pop music and the music industry in it, but
then one hundred years ago people couldn’t imagine a world with
instantaneous global communication. Or one without polio.

So
Rock and Roll, and all of the variations of popular music associated
with it, for all of its importance to those of us who care, may be a
minor blip in the course of history, generating little more than a
footnote in whatever passes for a college textbook in the year 2112.

To
quote Jeff Albertson, the Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons, ‟Oh,
I’ve wasted my life.”

The
thing is, this is true for pretty much everything we currently engage
in. No matter how much we love something, no matter how much we think
it is an essential part of our culture, no matter how much it defines
our lives (I’m looking at you, sports fans), history says it not
only won’t last but will probably be marginalized and misunderstood
by future scholars.

So,
if we accept this nihilistic point of view, why get really into
anything other than the mechanics of survival? I’ll get back to
that.

I
am certainly part of the generation that was born into a world where
music has always been a defining cultural artifact, and I’m very
aware of how this has shaped and influenced my way of interacting
with the world. For me, like Megan said, music has always been
important. And by important I mean in ways that go well beyond simply
liking a song. I am admittedly a music hobbyist who engages with it
in a less-than-casual fashion. I continually look for new music. I
get obsessive over musicians and want to know about them as
personalities, looking into their lives and biographies much deeper
than most people do. Music has always been a soundtrack to my
day-to-day that went beyond just being in the background.

I
grew up in an incredibly rural area. My parents were in their early
40s when I was born. My paternal grandmother, who lived with us, was
born in 1884. I was surrounded by adults who had grown to adulthood
in a very different world than the one I would come to inhabit. Until
I was twelve I lived in a small two-story six-room house of bare,
unpainted wood with a tin roof. We did not have running water. There
was a hand-dug water well with a hand pump in the front yard and an
outhouse in the back yard. I’m not complaining here. I actually
have very good memories of growing up there and I believe those
circumstances taught me valuable life lessons. But something in me
yearned for more.

Comic
books and music were the twin explosions of color in my sepia-toned
Appalachian youth, and they have always had a natural association in
my mind. Comics took me to cities and other countries and other
planets and other dimensions. The colorfully costumed heroes taught
me to dream bigger dreams and to imagine a world beyond the confines
of the hollow I grew up in.

Music
was always present in my home. Dad had played guitar and mandolin in
a Hillbilly band with his uncle and cousins when he was young. His
mother played piano and the accordion. That whole side of the family
had musical talent, but because of age I never really had the
opportunity to experience it first-hand. But there was always a radio
in the house, usually tuned to WWVA from Wheeling, West Virginia,
home of country music. I remember latching onto songs like Tiger by
the Tail by Buck Owens, and Folsom Prison Blues by Johnny Cash, and
Counting Flowers on the Wall by the Statler Brothers (probably
because they name-checked Captain Kangaroo, who I was big fan of
when I was four). These are overt memories for me. I was into songs.

The
British Invasion and the Beatles and the whole eruption of the music
industry in the 60s began to be woven into the fabric of everything
aimed at youth. I saw ads for Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention in comic books. The image of the T.Rex album The Slider stands out as
an image that stared at me from the double page
ads for record clubs I saw in every comic.

The
Beatles had a Saturday morning cartoon. So did the Jackson 5. The
Monkees were a weekly live action pastiche of Beatles inspired
frenzy. The Banana Splits, Josie and the Pussycats and the Groovie Ghoulies had weekly music videos interspersed with every episode. The cartoon version of the Archies had the #1 hit song in
1969 with Sugar Sugar. This hit launched Bubblegum Pop which led directly to a lot of
what became the Glam Rock movement in Great Britain. David Bowie and
Elton John were singing about Spacemen. Alice Cooper was a horror
comic come to life and KISS were simply superheroes from the first
time I saw them.

I
engaged in fannish activities well before I could afford to seriously
begin collecting albums. On our trips into town I not only bought
comics (always), but I also started to pick up copies of teenybopper
music mags like Tiger Beat and 16. I read the articles and hung the
posters that came with the mags on my bedroom wall. The Osmonds and
the Jackson 5 and David Cassidy and probably many others (hands up...
who remembers Tony DeFranco and the DeFranco Family and their ‟big”
hit, Heartbeat, It’s a Lovebeat?). I think I was trying to identify
with the larger than life qualities of these performers more than
having crushes on them. I never entered a ‟Win a Date With...”
contest. I would run around outside pretending I was a superhero from
the comics, and lip sync in front of mirror pretending I was a young
pop star.

I
started buying the singles I heard on the AM radio stations. Over
time I moved on to FM radio and much better music. Without the
guidance of an older sibling I missed the glory days of Led Zeppelin
and Black Sabbath and many others of that period. The truth is I
think Sabbath would have simply weirded me out back then. I’m also
very aware of how the bands I ended up really getting into had that
extra element of the visual. Superheroes and Rock and Roll. Deep
Purple was an awesome band, but they were a bunch of dudes with long
hair and blue jeans. I could see that anywhere. Did you see what Elton
John was wearing?

That’s
a trend that has never really gone away for me, not completely.
F-f-f-Fashion! My musical tastes now span a pretty wide cross-section
of genres and styles, but I always come back to the performance and
glamour. The Sweet, Queen, and Cheap Trick all fell into this
category for me as the 70s roared on. Adam Ant, wearing Indian
warpaint, a colonial greatcloak and a tri-corner hat caught my eye on
Solid Gold and I was hooked. I wasn’t aware of Bauhaus until years
later but if I had seen the videos of their live performances in 1979
I would have been all over that.

Strangely
the Hair Metal of the 80s didn’t grab me at the time, in spite of
the over-the-top costuming and makeup. I think once KISS took the
makeup off I just felt done with that style. This coincided with a
general malaise I was feeling at the time for the styles of music I
had been listening to. It’s no surprise to me now that this is when
I first discovered Bowie’s Berlin period through Heroes and started
down a path of Punk and New Wave and College Rock.

I
discovered lots of new bands I loved; The Replacements, The Pixies,
Love and Rockets, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, The Jazz Butcher, PJ
Harvey, and many, many more over the next thirty years. I bought a
lot of vinyl and then replaced most of it on CD. I went on obscure
tangents to the extent that an awful lot of the popular music of the 90s
remains pretty peripheral to my life. I go back and reclaim things I
lost and go back and discover things I missed.

But
it seems I’m always looking for that new, favorite band. Something
new I can get into with the same enthusiasm I used to, though that
seems increasingly difficult. Age and jaded tastes and feeling like
I’ve heard it all before gets in the way. I have moments of this,
still. I was crazy into the White Stripes, but then lost interest
pretty quickly. I was pretty obsessed with PJ Harvey but I now admit
that her last few projects just haven’t resonated with me. Call me
fickle, but she’s an old love now, one I can go back to for comfort
and familiarity. But I crave the excitement of the new.

I
have a new favorite band that, at least right now, are hitting all of
the marks.

TheStruts are a modern Glam Power Pop band from Derby. The band features Adam
Slack on guitar, Jed Elliot on bass, Gethin Davies on drums and Luke
Spiller on vocals. Now I want to say upfront that they’re probably
not doing anything very new, but they are doing it very, very well.
The songs are fun, hook-laden, and anthemic. Pretty much every song
on their recent debut album, Everybody
Wants,
is a catchy, earworm singalong. That’s not a complaint. The album
simply fills me with energy and makes me happy. Their image,
specifically as embodied by Spiller, is full-on Glam Rock. I saw them
on The Late Show with Steven Colbert and then watched a couple of videos
and knew immediately that I was hooked.

As
luck would have it I turned on to them about a week after they played
a show in Pittsburgh. I figured it would be ages before I had an
opportunity to see them. A few weeks after that they announced
a show at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. That’s
two-hour drive from here, and believe it or not I had never been to
the Hall of Fame. So I decided to make a day of it. On their website,
when they announced the show, they also announced a contest for a VIP
Meet and Greet as well as tickets to the show. I never enter online
contests but I thought, why not?

And
I won.

The
trip to Cleveland was amazing, a pilgrimage to both of my primary
hobbies; The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the original homes of the
two creators of Superman, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster (though that’s
mostly a separate story from the one I’m telling). The Hall of Fame
was enormous, full of artifacts to a cultural phenomenon that, if
Chuck Klosterman is right, won’t matter in a couple of hundred
years. But for right now, for those of us who have been formed by
this phenomenon, it was a building filled with objects of history and
power. John Lennon’s glasses and Ringo’s drum kit. Elvis
Presley’s gold lame’ suit. David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust
jumpsuit. Michael Jackson’s glove. The guitar played by Odetta Holmes on the day Mahalia Jackson encouraged Martin Luther King to, ‟Tell ‛em
about the Dream, Martin!”

History.
Power.

Seeing
the Struts in this venue, surrounded by this history, felt right to
me. It’s difficult for me to say this without sounding like I am
exaggerating, but I kind of feel like I had waited my whole life to
see this show. The energy, the songs, the costumes and spectacle. It
was simply one of the best concerts I have ever seen, and Luke
spiller is genuinely one of the best and most engaging front men I’ve
ever witnessed. I don’t say that lightly. I’ve seen a lot of
concerts.

I’ll
try to put it in perspective. What I want and expect out of a concert
depends a lot on my expectations. I’ve seen Lloyd Cole perform,
just him and a guitar, several times. I love his songs, I love his
voice, and what I want out of his show is very different than what I
want from a different kind of band, and I’ve never been
disappointed in him. I’ve been lucky enough to see a lot of bands I
really like in very small, intimate venues and have been privileged
to meet many of them.

But
deep down, where the kid who discovered Rock through School’s Out
and Rebel, Rebel, and Rock and Roll All Night still lives, when I see
one of these bands, I want to see a show. I’ve seen Alice Cooper... a
lot. I’ve seen KISS a number of times. I saw David Bowie. I saw
Queen in 1979. They were all amazing shows, including all of the
music and spectacle I love. In every one of those cases though, I
only saw them after they had become huge, in giant venues. For a few
of them I was close to the stage, but for the most part they were
always at a remove from the audience. For The Struts I felt like I
was getting to see them early in their career. Early enough for it to
be a much more intimate experience than I’ve ever had with these
other bands I mentioned. It felt like I imagine it would have felt to
see Queen in 1974, or Bowie right before Ziggy Stardust blew up, or
Alice Cooper at the Whiskey in Los Angeles.

I
can’t really say anything about Luke Spiller that hasn’t been
said in the rock press. He looks the part of Glam Rock star, a visual
cross between Freddie Mercury and a young Tim Curry. His voice has
amazing power and range. You can hear elements of Mercury, as well as
a touch of Noddy Holder from Slade (to my ears, anyway). He went
through several costume changes over the course of the show, clothes,
I discovered later, that were designed for him by Zandra Rhodes, who
designed costumes for both Freddy Mercury and Brian May. He commanded
the crowd, leading sing-alongs and cheers, making it impossible not
to have a good time. For one of the encore songs, a nice ballad, he
left the stage, waded into the audience, and convinced everyone to
sit on the floor around him as he sang. He was the focal point, but
the whole audience was the show.

Photo by Amy Lombard. New York Times.

Not
that the rest of the band was forgotten. They were tight and on cue
and every member got his moment in the spotlight. Not an easy task
given their leader’s glowing charisma, but you walked away knowing
that you had seen a band and not a solo performer and some backup
musicians.

They've opened for The Rolling Stones and as I'm writing they're scheduled to open for Guns 'n' Roses, so they're getting the opportunity to find a huge audience. Will
they last? Will they ever be as big as Queen or Madonna? Probably
not. That’s a long shot under the best of circumstances, and as I’ve
said I don’t think our current paradigm allows for that to happen
anymore. Will they be remembered in the year 2112? Does it really
matter?

I
haven’t been this excited for a new band in many, many years. I
want to hang posters of Luke and the rest of The Struts all over my
walls. I want to smear gold makeup on my cheeks and lip sync in front of
my mirror. It’s not just about recapturing my youth (though some of
it undoubtedly is). It’s about living in the moment. Enjoying our
time before it is lost to history. Engaging with the things that
bring you joy (yes, even sports), because life is hard and the best
thing we can leave the future is a life well lived. We have this
moment and nothing more. The past is only nostalgia if you aren’t
living now. The future will come and wipe it all away, but live and
love and laugh because in this moment we are alive. Do you love it, right now? Then it matters, right now.